


Don't Look Back

by Hyperius (Euregatto)



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, Drabble, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 11:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15266451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Hyperius
Summary: “She’s the first to look at you like you aren’t a monster,” Ben remarks snidely, and when his trigger finger catches the hinge of the lightsaber, Kylo Ren shifts. "Does that scare you?"





	Don't Look Back

**Author's Note:**

> a quick piece for some writing practice. enjoy!

  

  

Afterwards, Kylo Ren has some time to think.

    

He observes his new reality with objective fascination, as if he'd been staring at it through a microscope like the one in Hux's office prior to getting the full experience of it. The way the starlight of the surrounding cosmos refracts off the snow, the paleness of his face, the blood plastered between his fingers. The light's different here, from his vantage point splayed across the ground, different now that the sun has folded behind the horizon. There is a hint of redness to this light. He blames the damage to his eye. _Thank you, Rey,_ he thinks next, and quite drily. 

He hooks his tired hands deep into the salt, violating it with desperation and knowing, and here he feels the heat of the earth waning through the Force.

 _Death_ , it screams. _Death, and success._

 

   

  

He awakens every cycle, to a galaxy that propels itself forward without conscious and never changes a bit, and the only reason he bothers to awaken at all is because he can sense Rey’s distress half a cosmos away. He should have killed her on Crait. Instead he wasted his time, his opening, on Luke Skywalker, who’s heartbeat in Kylo’s nightmares has finally ceased. _Everything else must go_ , he tells himself, reminded of the way Han Solo used to clean the Falcon like dust was a sandstorm _._ His finality is unfortunate. Rey really liked that man.

So Kylo Ren doesn’t kill himself, because he has a vow to keep. He doesn’t kill the First Order, because he wants to keep his vow.

He doesn’t kill Ben because Ben simply doesn’t want to go.

 _But everything else must go someday,_ he tells the man he used to be, since there’s nothing else to think about between them. His dreams were once wastelands reflecting cities, his Master was a stability without anchorage, his Knights were behaving like time. And the only life he did not kill is that of the sliver of light Rey managed to save.

“She’s the first to look at you like you aren’t a monster,” Ben remarks snidely, and when his trigger finger catches the hinge of the lightsaber, Kylo shifts. "Does that scare you?"

There’s nothing Ben Solo doesn’t know. He knows the answer, he knows all of Kylo’s answers each and every time, but asks anyway. Part of Kylo Ren wonders if Ben is entertaining the recesses of their shared subconscious, of their persistent doubts.

_What does it matter?_

“Rey’s love for me wavers,” Ben says, he’s as snarky as their mother, “and without it, you will suffer the same, lonely fate. Soon my conscious will return to the earth and you will either choose to wander this world freely, or reside here, as a sadistic government’s _pawn_.” Their gazes connect, and Kylo understands why Rey chooses the light over the dark. “Does that scare you?”

_You flirt with the edge of Hell, Ben Solo._

“Often,” he responds. His genetically inherited smirk, which is almost always placidly in place, is gone. Many things that were once candid in his life are whispers at the edge of the horizon, the melding of past and future. One of his hands is suddenly on Kylo’s shoulder. He never flinches away. “Fate is but circumstance. Hell is but fate.”

_I don’t know if I believe in Fate._

“So why am I still here?” Ben’s voice is humorless, his accent is an afterthought. The glint in his eyes is lethal like the shining of a polished bullet.

 _Everything must go someday,_ Kylo reiterates and Ben thumbs carelessly at the trigger of their lightsaber. It’s never meant to be threatening – he’s incapable of hurting his sinister half regardless his intentions – but every single time Ben’s finger hooks the trigger, Kylo is reminded of something he forgot six years ago. If Ben wants to say something more, he doesn’t, and his hand falls away like a leaf and his humming begins to fill the brim of their mind where only Kylo can hear it.

Either way, the conversation is through.

   

  

   

  

  

Leia Organa, even in her age, is the equivalent of an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object. If Kylo Ren believed in reincarnation he wouldn’t hesitate to believe that his great-grandmother’s soul was reborn again. But Leia is her own elegant mix of divine will and divine wrath, and like all humans, is subject to a mortal death all the same. For the last few months, she’s been ill. Tired. Her spirit is waning as Luke Skywalker’s once had.

Rey, and to the First Order’s thorough surprise, the Resistance, agree to a temporary stalemate, and the Falcon charts a course for the Finalizer. Ben’s palpable misery represses Kylo’s own want to shoot at the ship on sight.

 _Don’t think this will change my mind,_ he tells Rey when they’re alone in his room—it was a matter of her looking at him, her head tilted—but she guides his head between her legs and he lets all previous thoughts slip away for a while.

_I’m—_

“Ben,” she says, her hands gentle in his hair. “I wish I could make you understand.”

He understands that her decision is final, and he doesn’t dwell on it.

   

  

  

  

   

She’s around for only four more days, and Ben Solo wishes it could have been four more centuries.

Her life wanes and pushes like the tides of the ocean, rolling upon the sand. Rey is careful around them both, her, because she’s fading, Kylo, because the subject is touchy and Ben is terrifying when he’s in _pain_. Eventually Leia’s aura – always present like the gravity of a collapsing star, always cool as frost even when she could have easily burned the galaxy to the ground – begins to diminish.

“Does that scare you?” Ben asks Kylo, receiving and expecting no response.

    

Then she calls him. It’s almost an arrow that pierces through wall and stone and shadow. He slides from the darkness of the Force’s veil and hovers curiously over her bed, waiting for another response or her final words, the much anticipated “I’ll survive this, I always do” that never comes. He’s selfish with his thoughts. He’s always been selfish with his mother. Rey is looking at him from the other side of the bed but her expression is nothing short of guilty.

Rey is as beautiful as the day they met. Ben thinks himself lucky. Kylo thinks himself weak.

“It’s never too late,”Leia tells him. “But this is my fault. I should have never sent you away.”

_Mother—_

“No,” she says with finality, her hand clutching his. “All those lives I could live are nothing to all I’ve done and seen with the time I’ve been given. _This_ , my son, is all I can give you now.”

He holds her until she’s passed, and then he takes his leave.

   

    

   

   

   

 _You have my permission to go,_ he says when Hux finds him standing on the bridge beneath the belly of the planet’s moon.

“Go where?” he asks.

_Everything must go. You don’t have to stay by my side if you wish to achieve more than this._

“I choose to stay, however my decisions are not influenced by you. We have similar goals, Supreme Leader, but your methods don’t deter mine.”

_I understand. Then you are dismissed._

Hux salutes and leaves. In his place stands Rey. Kylo doesn't have to turn to her to know she's there; he rarely has to look at her, choosing instead to divert his gaze in shame and in agony, knowing that she desires Ben Solo and understanding that he'll feel everything she won't tell him. Whatever she wants to tell him matters none when she slides her arms around his waist and presses her forehead into the back of his coat.

 _And what of you?_ He wants to know. _I will meet you in the middle, but I can promise no more. I can’t offer more than this._

“You don’t have to go, Ben.”

 _What if I choose to tuck away into the far corner of the galaxy for the next thirty years?_ He turns to her and holds her against him and feels Ben sliding under the surface of his skin, grabbing hold of the reins. _What if I choose to sever my connection with the Force? Will you wait for me, then? Will you persist in changing my mind?_

“It’s not too late.”

She was using his mother’s words against him.

“There is still good in you, Kylo.”

_Good is objective, Rey. I will only take the paths I find necessary._

“Then I will find you at the end,” she says, “and together we’ll face the Light.”

   

   


End file.
